Six Female Execs on Reaching the C-suite

View the full WWD Beauty Inc Women’s Issue here.
While beauty is a category with an overall workforce (and consumer base) that is predominantly female, the number of women in the c-suite is significantly lower. Not a single one of the top 10 manufacturers in WWD Beauty Inc’s annual global ranking of the 100 biggest beauty companies has a female chief executive officer and there are only 10 on the entire list, including Avon’s Sheri McCoy, who is stepping down in March following pressure from activist investor Barington Capital.
Moreover, the last two years have seen an exodus of senior-level women from some of the largest companies around, including Lynne Greene and Thia Breen from the Estée Lauder Cos., Karen Fondu from L’Oréal, Heidi Manheimer from Shiseido, Camille McDonald from Bath & Body Works and Pamela Baxter from LVMH, many of whom were replaced by men.
That dichotomy led to the creation of this panel, where legendary businesswoman Rose Marie Bravo led a conversation with other women who have reached the upper echelons of corporate life on what it really takes to reach the top today. In a wide-ranging conversation that covered everything from compensation to bitchiness (yes, we went there), one message